


In Between

by minkhollow



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Community: itsproductivity, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-06
Updated: 2011-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkhollow/pseuds/minkhollow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Well," he says to himself.  "That backfired beautifully."  Joshua in the interdimensional space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Between

**Author's Note:**

> Written for itsproductivity on LJ, prompt: Write about what disappeared.  
> I am not Syfy; I just borrow because it's clearly who disappeared, not what.

It’s not that Joshua doesn’t try to get back right away; he’s still trying when Artie ushers Claudia out of the lab, when the next school year starts, when someone comes back and puts a padlock on the door, when the college finally stops using the building altogether. But the compass, which was so cooperative the first time around, must have some secret or other that he missed entirely; it’s not letting him go anywhere.

“Well,” he says to himself. “That backfired beautifully.”

The interdimensional space is a weird experience in and of itself - he’d call it weirder than the teleportation itself. He can see the lab, through a glowing curtain of golden light, but he can’t interact with anything in it (or anyone, the few times that’s a consideration). More than once he wishes he’d thought to put a pen and notebook in his pocket, if only so he was stuck with more than his own thoughts and the damned compass.

And all things considered, it’s a good thing he never gets hungry or tired. It’s hard to tell how time is passing back in the world; Joshua can tell it is, of course, but he has no idea what it means in relation to where he is.

Eventually, it occurs to him to try to reach out to Claudia. On some attempts, he has more luck than others, but he can’t tell whether she believes it’s really him; he doesn’t hold that skepticism against her, under the circumstances, but if there were only some way he could leave a note where she would see it--

And then he remembers the day he did just that. He’d been frustrated with the equation, and it wasn’t like Claudia could have helped him work it out - smart as she is, she was nine at the time and not quite up to calculus - but he’d felt a lot better after writing a note pretending she could. He even knows which book it’s in; from there, it’s just a matter of getting her to look in that one.

Even after he tries, he doesn’t know whether it worked for a while - but eventually, the padlock on the lab’s door rattles.

If only Claudia could see his face; how much she’s grown is the first clear indication he’s had of just how long he’s been stuck here. She doesn’t do much other than look around, that time, but she does come back more than once. The fourth or fifth time (after a while, even that starts to blur together), she sets up an experiment, and Joshua’s more than a little glad that wherever the college is having its physics classes now, they haven’t tried to clean out all the stuff he was using to work with the compass.

Of course, he’s not so glad after she tries it, and it turns out whatever she’s done this time isn’t enough. Now he’s stuck in between the in-between and the real world, and that hurts, more than a little.

Maybe it’s the Donovan impulsive streak, maybe it’s the fact that Claudia misses him; whatever it is, she doesn’t give up just because it didn’t work the first time. Every time he gets a little closer, but every time it also hurts more. The final straw is when Claudia passes out, after one attempt, and wipes away a nosebleed when she comes around.

She doesn’t come back for what he guesses is a few months after that, and Joshua almost hopes she has enough sense to leave this experiment alone - but she does come back, and she does try again, and her nosebleed is even worse this time. Joshua sighs, after Claudia leaves, and decides it’s time to try someone else.

The good news is, there’s a perfect storm of conditions when he finds Artie, enough that he can at least try to say something; the bad news is he’s not sure if it actually sunk home. He wouldn’t blame Artie for a little skepticism either, but the older man definitely knew more than he’d let on the first time they talked. It would be great if Joshua had any idea what kind of impact he’d made.

He almost laughs when, a while later, Claudia bursts into the lab, all but dragging Artie behind her. Apparently, they’d had the same idea once again.


End file.
